Furious 7 smashes SA box office record like never before

Universal Pictures and UIP South Africa announced that Fast & Furious 7 easily sprinted past the records Fifty Shades of Grey set a mere 49 days ago, by clocking an overwhelming R20 971 652 in its four-day Easter run.

The film now holds the South African records for the all-time opening weekend for a non-3D film, the all-time opening weekend for Universal Pictures, the highest opening film for 2015 and the all-time opening weekend of all films released at the local box office.

With an incredible $392.3m worldwide, the seventh installment in Universal's homegrown franchise takes its place as the fourth-highest global opening of all time behind behemoths such as two films in the Harry Potter franchise and Marvel's The Avengers. Fast & Furious is the only original franchise to reach results of this magnitude.

Fast & Furious 7 aka Furious 7, was Universal's biggest wide release ever, playing in 14 687 theatres worldwide including IMAX and large format. The film opened No 1 in all 64 markets where it was released and is Universal's highest-grossing worldwide opening of all time.

In North America, the film grossed $147.2m in three days - the highest opening for a film since November of 2013. It is also the top April opener and the highest Easter opening ever. Furious 7 is the ninth-highest US opening film of all time. With Fast & Furious, Universal is incredibly proud to be the only diverse series and like the film, the audience was ethnically mixed with 75% non-Caucasian.

The international weekend grosses totaled $245.1m; the third-largest opening of all time overseas behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It was Universal's highest-grossing international weekend by a large margin, beating the previous record-holder Fast & Furious 6 ($162m).

Furious 7 was the biggest opening of all time, for all films, in 29 international markets, and in 39 territories it was Universal's biggest. Universal still has four more markets to release including major territories such as Russia, Japan and China.

The Fast & Furious franchise evolved from its modest roots and has only gotten better with age as evidenced by the 51% increase in opening weekend box office worldwide from Fast & Furious 6.

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